The relationship between migrants and the German police
is not only under strain because of racist abuse in the form
of bodily harm and harassment. With the legalisation of stop
and search operations, independent of "reasonable suspicion"
or specific incident, in several regional (Länder)
police regulations as well the Federal Border Law, the police
has gained another instrument which, as practice has shown, is
being used increasingly to criminalise migrants.

Bavaria was the first Land to introduce "non
suspect and event related" controls (hereafter: arbitrary
stop an search) in its regional police regulation in 1994. Since
then, several German Länder, such as Baden-Württemberg,
Lower Saxony, Thuringia, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Brandenburg,
Berlin, Saxony as well as the Federal Government have followed
the example and have, in one form or another, enabled their police
and Federal Border Guards (BGS) to conduct dragnet controls (2).
Depending on the law's regional variations, police forces are
allowed to conduct arbitrary stop and search operations within
30 km of the German border region: on thoroughfares (motorways,
through-routes in Europe and other important cross border traffic
roads), in public international transport facilities, at airports,
in trains and train stations or in principle in public transport
areas (Lower Saxony, Berlin). During these operations, police
are allowed to stop any person, to ask for identification, "to
look closely" at objects carried or even to search the person
and vehicle. Only the Berlin police and the BGS are constrained
in their remits by "situation related findings", or
rather "border police experiences." All other regional
police forces can conduct unregulated arbitrary stop and search
operations.

Aims and objectives

The reasoning behind arbitrary stop and search, according
to police regulations and the Federal Border Law, is the "prevention
and ending of illegal crossings of national boundaries"
and "illegal residence" as well as the "preventative
fight against cross border crime". The reasoning behind
the alleged necessity of the controls is similarly stereotypical:
due to the cessation of internal border controls in the framework
of the Schengen Agreement, the crime filtering effect of border
controls is no longer present. "Criminal or offensive goods
and illegal services", it is claimed, can now be transported
easily from one country to another. Furthermore, the high "pressure
of illegal migration" on borders is undiminished (3). The
necessity of BGS controls was justified by the then government
fractions of the CDU/CSU (Christlich Demokratische Union
and Christlich Soziale Union) and the FDP (Freie
Demokratische Partei) with the "disproportionably high
contribution of non-German suspects to serious violent offences"
as well as the "considerable increase in trafficking through
professional trafficking organisations." (4)

Selection criteria

During dragnet controls on motor ways, in trains, train stations
etc., it is not possible to control every traveller. For legal
reasons (due to "reasonableness" and "from the
efficiency point of view") the "pre-selection"
is all the more important when conducting arbitrary controls
(5). Police regulations themselves do not delineate that certain
groups of persons should be controlled. According to the Interior
Ministry of Lower Saxony, the implementation regulations of the
laws do not impose selection criteria on police officers either
(6). A situation report by the Interior Ministry of Bavaria from
September 1996 however, conveys a different image: "One
or two selecting officers (particularly trained eyes!) are positioned
in a closed off lane just before the place of control and they
select the vehicles to be controlled by looking into the vehicle
interior, according to established criteria" (7).
Further, according to the police spokesman for the police headquarters
Würzburg, the "police officers...depending on their
specific work experiences and the control objectives, follow
a certain investigative grid" (8). In Bavaria, the Crime
Police Force is constructing "investigation grids serving
the selection process" for the specially created control
forces, targeting the "blitz burglaries by the Rumanian
safe cracking groups or Polish car smuggling gangs" amongst
others (9). These investigation grids are therefore being used
to track down certain groups of foreigners.

Apart from the established selection criteria, the officers
are supposed to draw on their work- and life experiences (10).
But here also, it is predominantly outward appearances such as
skin colour or life styles which lead to controls, especially
if in the eyes of the police "something does not match".
For example, if someone "whom one doesn't trust to have
ever earned 100 Marks himself" sits in an expensive car
(11). The mobile task forces which conduct arbitrary controls
on Bavarian motorways for example, critically observe vehicles
with number plates from the former Yugoslavia, the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Rumania, White Russia, Ukraine and the Baltic States.
All Polish travellers from the Zielona Gora area for example
are said to be controlled without exception; the city is seen
to be a centre for well organised crime gangs (12).

The very logic of arbitrary stop and search itself suggests
such mechanisms of selection. If there is talk of imported crime,
illegal migration flows and violent foreigners, the politics
produces a racist template according to which the police divide
people into suspects and non-suspects. Moreover, the only way
the police can successfully control violations of the Aliens
Act, is through the control of supposed non-Germans (13).

Successful Controls? Control of Successes!

"Sensational hit rates" were proclaimed by Bavaria's
interior minister Beckstein (CSU) in his annual assessment in
1996 after the introduction of arbitrary police controls in Bavaria
(14). In Baden-Württemberg also, dragnet controls have "proved
very reliable" according to interior minister Schäuble
(CDU) (15). However, these "success stories" are difficult
to comprehend, as there is no statistical investigation as to
location, scope and outcome of the controls. The Interior Ministries
of the Länder do not even seem to be interested
in hard facts, as evaluations could show that dragnet controls
do not counter cross-border, or even well organised, crime. In
Bavaria, the data protection official and the SPD (Sozial
Demokratische Partei Deutschlands) fraction of the regional
parliament have long demanded a control mechanism to evaluate
the successes of arbitrary police controls. The regional parliament
however, voted against this proposal with a CSU majority (16).
Baden-Württemberg also does not produce details of investigations,
in order "not to unnecessarily waste capacities for statistical
objectives" (17). Apart from this, the regional CDU fraction
holds its own success criteria: it is of the opinion that the
authorisation of dragnet controls "is in itself a success
for the police, because they need the new legal basis on grounds
of experiences deriving from praxis" (18). The German parliament
(Lower House) on the other hand has asked the government to evaluate
arbitrary police controls conducted by the BGS before the limited
authorisation order runs out at the end of 2003 (19). The Saxony
police regulation even lays down an annual evaluation of scope
and outcome of the controls.

Who gets caught up in the mesh of dragnet controllers then?
Is it really "organised criminals", large scale drug
smugglers and professional traffickers? The few available statistics
only allow for limited, but fairly unambiguous, conclusions.

After the results of an eight month evaluation of arbitrary
controls in trains between 1997/98 in Bavaria in the framework
of the "Investigation Concept Schiene", the
police reached a "success quota" of 16% (20), which
implies that every sixth police control leads to the detection
or arrest of a person. At first sight therefore, arbitrary controls
seem to be rather efficient. A closer look however, drastically
qualifies these "success stories": around three quarters
of those arrested were refugees going through the asylum process
or those with a temporary residence permit who violated the imposed
travel restrictions, the so-called Residenzpflicht,
which means they were caught outside their allocated district
around the Aliens Office. In Germany, leaving one's allocated
district (Landkreis) constitutes an infringement of
the asylum procedure, or the Aliens Act. The fight against cross
border or organised crime is not even peripherally tackled here.
Barely 3% of those arrested had an outstanding arrest warrant
and the amount of drugs confiscated fell within "personal
consumption" limits. Drug dealers therefore, were not caught
in the net either. Only every fourteenth person was an "illegal"
immigrant. The high proportion of migrants and refugees (around
82%) on the other hand, reveals the strategy of the police, which
is solely aimed at outer appearances allegedly outing all non-Germans.
The six month evaluation of arbitrary controls in Western Munich
shows similar results. Out of a "success rate" of 22.6%
over half of the offences were related to infringements of the
Aliens Act or the asylum procedure law (21).

The above suspicions are entirely confirmed when looking at
the new arrest statistics for the police headquarters [AT] Mittelfranken.
In 1999, 692 persons were controlled in trains and train stations
in the area of Mittelfranken (22). Police officers do not conduct
daily controls here but mainly at the weekend when many people
travel with a cheap "weekend ticket". The following
offences were recorded: around 32 criminal offences and 103 legal
infringements relating to the Aliens Act and the asylum procedure
regulations, many of them dealing with violations of the so-called
Residenzpflicht. In relation to the overall number of
persons controlled, these figures prove nothing other than the
Bavarian police officers specifically target migrants during
controls. There is no other way to explain this "success
rate": every fifth control leads to the detection of a breach
of the Aliens Act. Furthermore, the strategy of targeting regional
trains completely defies the proclaimed objectives of arbitrary
stop and search operations: the objectives after all are claimed
to be the prevention and ending of unauthorised border crossings,
illegal residency or the fight against cross border crime. Instead,
the police spins its "successful" results on the backs
of asylum seekers, who want to visit friends and acquaintances
at the weekend.

At times, so-called arbitrary controls [stop and search] have
the explicit purpose of systematically controlling migrants.
One of these examples is the "Pilot Project [on] Illegal
Immigration and Human Trafficking" which was created through
a decision of the Schengen Executive Committee. In October 1998,
the German Federal Crime Office, the Federal Border Guards and
regional police forces took part in a three day international
operation with coordinated border controls and inland stop and
search operations which specifically targeted refugees along
the "main trafficking routes". Around 706 refugees,
who illegally entered or resided in Germany, were caught during
this operation (23).

Suspect unrelated controls = Foreigner controls

Suspect unrelated controls [arbitrary stop and search] violate
the principle of equality as laid down in the German Basic Law,
because even if only indirectly, they are tied to specific groups
of persons, in this case migrants. They open doors for the arbitrary
criminalisation of migrants. Furthermore, the present control
practice will lead to an even higher representation of foreigners
in police crime statistics than exists already (24). This in
turn, will lead to more discrimination and legal repression for
migrants. Due to its proclaimed aims, objectives and praxis,
arbitrary stop and search is in the final instance nothing but
a new instrument for the control of refugees and migrants. The
stigmatising of human beings who, judging from their outer appearances,
are seen to be "non-German" (and citizenship does not
play a role here) is not only accepted by politicians, but is
a deliberate strategy (25).

However, the police also targets migrants without the authorisation
of arbitrary stop and search. In addition to the monthly regional
stop and search operations, the regional police headquarters
in Baden-Württemberg for example is instructed "to
conduct at least one monthly stop and a search operation targeting
illegally resident foreigners" (26). In police jargon, this
is called "to go into the foreigners..."

Martina Kant is co-editor of Bürgerrechte & Polizei/CILIP
and research fellow at the Freie Universität Berlin.

1) Parts of this article are based on material by Fredrik
Roggan, Bremen, who I want to thank at this point for his support.

15) Press release of the Interior Ministry of Baden-Württemberg,
3.9.1997.

16) LT Bayern, Drs. 14/1033, 14/1304, 14/1565, 14.7.1999.

17) LT Baden-Württemberg, Drs. 12/1023, 12.2.1997.

18) LT Baden-Württemberg, Drs. 12/1023, 15.5.1997, p.
32.

19) Walter, B. (see footnote 3), p.295. According to the border
protection headquarters (Grenzschutzdirektion), the
Interior Ministry is planning to publish a press release in the
near future, evaluating the arbitrary stop and search operations
conducted by the BGS in 1999.